Friday, 4 July 2014

No Beautiful Woman Is Safe

‘Womaneater’ is an enjoyably daft tale of a mad
scientist (George Coulouris) and his obsession with bringing the dead back to
life. He hopes to achieve this morally equivocal task by using a huge,
malevolent plant that he has transplanted from the Amazon jungle. He feeds it
women, then, after it’s had time to digest its dinner, he milks it, puts the
residue through some complicated looking scientific apparatus and the result is
a drug which can (briefly) bring things back to life.

The obvious issue is an ethical one, i.e. is it worth taking
a human life to be able to reinvigorate a dead heart for a few seconds? The answer is clearly ‘no, of course not, don’t be stupid’. Then there are other
questions: why does the plant only eat women? And why do they have to be young
and attractive? Only the savage misogynistic Plant-God knows, and he’s saying
nothing, just waving his arms about and growling.

50’s starlet Vera Day makes for an attractive and down to
earth heroine (elocution lessons haven't quite taken the edges from her working class accent) and the scene where her magnificent cantilevered bosom distracts her fiancée
from fixing a car is priceless.